KINGSPORT, Tenn. — A new $100 million electronic medical records system is intended to improve health care, efficiency and provide patients easy access to their information, Wellmont Health System officials said Thursday.
Wellmont expects to fully roll out its Epic medical records system at all seven regional hospitals and other health-care offices March 29. It has been in use since December at Wellmont Medical Associates offices across the region.
Wellmont officials discussed the 18-month integration effort during a celebration event at the Holston Valley outpatient center in Kingsport.
The singular electronic system will replace a series of lesser systems employed throughout the network, according to Tracey Moffatt, Wellmont’s chief operating officer.
“Two years ago, we decided to take our electronic health system as it existed — which was a disparate bunch of pieces and parts — and bring it all together into one combined system known as Epic,” Moffatt said.
“We decided then we wanted it to be about patient care. In the past, if you visited one of our cardiologists, one of our urgent care centers, one of our hospitals, all could deliver great care to you but their electronic systems didn’t talk to each other,” Moffatt said. “Sometimes, it was hard for one physician to know what another physician had done just the week before. There was a lot of paper and talking and faxing back and forth or maybe the patient was carrying around a paper chart and bringing it from place to place.”
Epic, which is not an acronym, is a private Wisconsin firm considered a world leader in electronic medical record technology. The company serves hundreds of health systems and hospitals.
Wellmont was able to use about $45 million in federal Meaningful Use incentive funding — through Medicare and Medicaid — to help pay for the Epic system. The project team was about 200 people, including 80 existing employees, some newly hired workers and some from a third party.
New Epic patient records will integrate ambulatory, diagnostic, in-patient and out-patient treatment care information with medication, registration, demographics and billing records all in a singular system, Moffatt said.
“The reason it took us months and months and thousands of people being involved was to make sure all that information flows to the right place, to the right people, with layers of security and we have to make sure that information is mapped correctly,” Moffatt said.
The process included importing information from Wellmont’s existing systems, substantial amounts of data input and verifications by doctors to determine patient information was correct, said Dr. Cory Siffring, a surgeon and trauma physician. The program also required a steep learning curve for doctors.
“The interface is designed to have very few clicks to get what you need, so that puts a lot of icons on the screen. When you first look at a computer running Epic, it looks like the cockpit of a 747,” Siffring said. “All of the clinicians have done about 27 hours of classes and training before they’re comfortable seeing the first patient. It was daunting.”
The new system will include a “MyWellmont” online portal so patients can directly access most of their medical records. The program has multiple layers of security to protect personal information, according to Will Showalter, Wellmont’s senior vice president of information technology.
“There is a lot of security around the database and physical security around the equipment. Built into the application is a layer of security so — when you’re on MyWellmont — that is a secure channel back and forth and data is encrypted as it moves. We aren’t likely to have the same issues that Target had because we aren’t a transaction-based system.”
Wellmont CEO Denny DeNarvaez said this month’s rollout is only a part of the journey.
“We will stand this up, we will get these systems running and then we’ll improve them day after day after day until we take Epic to its optimal position,” said DeNarvaez, who added that she was previously involved with implementing this system at jobs in Minneapolis and St. Louis.
“I saw how that brought the community together, how better health care was being delivered every day,” DeNarvaez said.
She praised the efforts of executives, physicians, nurses and others who are implementing the system in a record 18 months.
“The [medical records] product we had in place was being sunsetted — there was nothing we could do about it — so we had to make a decision about electronic medical records,” DeNarvaez said. “We had a very short time line that was inflicted on us because the product we were on was going to be sunsetted.”
Since each patient can access personal records anywhere, the information can be used by doctors outside this region, should a patient be traveling and have a medical emergency.
“Health care has been one of the only things that happen to you and you don’t have any information available and now you will,” DeNarvaez said. “And it’s portable. It’s not just within Wellmont. A patient can access the MyWellmont portal, or give a family member access, and that information is available to physicians in other places.” Source
